For a while I’ve been reluctant to switch to Firefox primarily because of the various IE shortcuts that I had grown to learn and love. Furthermore, when a colleague introduced me to Opera and the host of productivity gestures that you could use I was once again faced with learning even more shortcuts. Thankfully Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera share a large number of shortcuts and with IE 7 there are just a few more you need to make browsing life a little more comfortable.
As pilfered from the IE Blog:
Basic navigation
| To do the following | Press this |
Go Back to the last page | Alt+Left Arrow Shift+Mouse wheel up/down also navigates forward and back Backspace |
| Go Forward to the next page | Alt+Right Arrow Shift+Backspace |
| Stop the page from loading | Escape (Esc) |
| Refresh the page | F5 or Ctrl+F5 |
| Go to your Homepage | Alt+Home |
| Give focus to the Address Bar | Alt+D |
| Add “www.†and “.com†to what you typed in the address bar before navigating | Ctrl+Enter |
| Scroll down/up the web page | Spacebar / Shift+Spacebar |
| Close the window | Alt+F4 |
Others:
Some interesting hotkeys you cannot see by simply looking in the menus …
| To do the following | Press this |
| Immediately add this site to your favorites | Ctrl+D |
| Open your favorites in a folder window | Shift+Click on the “Organize Favorites†menu item |
| Put focus on the Information Bar | Alt+N |
| Open a link in a new window | Shift+Click |
| Open the right click ‘context’ menu for the currently selected item | Shift+F10 |
| Change the text size (will be Zoom in IE 7) | Ctrl+Mouse wheel Up/Down |
New in Internet Explorer 7
Tabs:
| To do the following | Press this |
| Open links in a new tab in the background | Ctrl+Click |
| Open links in a new tab in the foreground | Ctrl+Shift+Click |
| Open a new tab in the foreground | Ctrl+T |
| Switch between tabs | Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab |
| Close current tab (or current window when there are no open tabs) | Ctrl+W |
| Open a new tab in the foreground from the address bar | Alt+Enter |
| Switch to the n’th tab | Ctrl+n (n can be 1-8) |
| Switch to the last tab | Ctrl+9 |
| Close other tabs | Ctrl+Alt+F4 |
| Open quick tabs | Ctrl+Q |
Zoom:
| To do the following | Press this |
| Increase zoom (+ 10%) | Ctrl+(+) |
| Decrease zoom (-10%) | Ctrl+(-) |
| Original size (100% zoom)* | Ctrl+0 |
Search:
| To do the following | Press this |
| Go to the Toolbar Search Box | Ctrl+E |
| Open your search query in a new tab | Alt+Enter |
| Bring down the search provider menu | Ctrl+Down Arrow |
Favorites Center:
| To do the following | Press this |
| Open Favorites Center to your favorites | Ctrl+I |
| Open Favorites Center to your history | Ctrl+H |
| Open Favorites Center to your feeds | Ctrl+J |
Mouse Actions:
Even with all these cool keyboard hotkeys we’ve introduced a few helpful shortcuts for mouse users as well.
| To do the following with a mouse | Press this |
| Open a link in a background tab | Middle mouse button |
| Close a tab | Middle mouse button on the tab |
| Open a new tab | Double click on empty tab band space |
| Zoom the page in/out 10% | Ctrl+Mouse wheel Up/Down |